African Rainforest & Pygmy Peoples

Baka child in a rainforest camp (Baka Pygmies, Gabon).

"Every now and then a mother arrives and puts her child down on the ground. Toddlers who can barely speak, unsteady on their legs, still feeding at the breast. But then it becomes clear that when it's time to sing, no-one gets a single note wrong, no hesitation in adding a triple metre to a double metre, to make micro-variations to the line of the melody. They are not even aware that they are doing it. Easy as dressing a Barbie doll. As normal as stacking building blocks..."

Music anthropologist and writer, he has carried out field research in central Africa, where he lived with the Baka Pygmies and other forest peoples, whose music, rituals and survival strategies he has been studying for more than a decade.

Photo gallery about African Pygmies and the rainforest, with soundscapes from pygmy camps and the forest.

Page URL: http://www.pygmies.org/rainforest-pygmies/photo-gallery.php?photo=52 Photos, texts and audio recordings by Luis Devin.The time in the tropical rainforests of the Western Congo Basin, where the Baka and the other Pygmy peoples live, is 15:37.Every minute, at least 25 hectares (250.000 m²) of forest are destroyed around the world (source: WWF).